Labels We Love – United Artists

Gerry Rafferty – City To City

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More British Folk Rock

  • This early British pressing of Rafferty’s Must-Own Classic boasts an INCREDIBLE Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) side one mated to a superb Double Plus (A++) side two
  • City To City is a Must Own Album – no right-thinking audiophile can fail to be impressed by the songwriting and production of Rafferty’s Masterpiece of British Folk Pop
  • You won’t believe how rich, Tubey Magical, big, undistorted and present this copy is (until you play it anyway)
  • If all you know are audiophile or domestic pressings, you should be prepared for a mind-blowing experience with this UK pressing
  • 4 1/2 stars: “Rafferty’s turns of phrase and tight composition skills create a fresh sound and perspective all his own… resulting in a classic platter buoyed by many moments of sheer genius.”

Here you will find the kind of rich, sweet, classically British Tubey Magical sound that we cannot get enough of here at Better Records. (more…)

John Williams – The Missouri Breaks (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)

More of the music of John Williams (1932- )

  • With two solid Double Plus (A++) sides, you’ll have a hard time finding a copy that sounds remotely as good as this original UA pressing
  • This one is doing almost everything right – it’s bigger, bolder, richer and more clean, clear and open than a lot of what we played
  • As one might expect, the sound absolutely jumps out of the speakers on this recording
  • I recall this record being on the TAS List back in the day – it appears to have since dropped off the newer iterations, but we still think of it as a Super Disc
  • “While eschewing the grandiose string arrangements and heroic sweep of the composer’s best-known efforts, it’s nevertheless one of Williams’ most delightful and ambitious scores, applying traditional Western instrumentation like guitar, banjo, and harmonica to melodies rooted in contemporary pop and jazz.”

What typically separates the killer copies from the merely good ones are two qualities that we often look for in the records we play: transparency and lack of smear.

Transparency allows you to hear into the recording, reproducing the ambience and subtle musical cues and details that high-resolution analog is known for.

Note that most Heavy Vinyl pressings being produced these days seem to be rather Transparency Challenged. Lots of important musical information — the kind we hear on even second-rate regular pressings — is simply nowhere to be found.

Lack of smear is also important, especially on a recording with so many plucked instruments. The speed and clarity of the transients, the sense that fingers are pulling on strings, strings that are ringing with tonally correct harmonics, is what makes these records so much fun to play.

The best copies really get that sound right, in the same way that the best copies of Cat Stevens’ records get the sound of stringed instruments right.

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Electric Light Orchestra / On the Third Day – The British Imports Are Made from Dubs

More of the Music of The Electric Light Orchestra

More of Our Favorite Art Rock Records

Sonic Grade: F

It’s obvious, or should be, that the Brit vinyl is made from sub-generation copy tapes. The imports sound like someone threw a blanket over your speakers. We know this because we had a bunch of them cleaned up for our shootout many years ago and they all sucked.

We tend to buy Electric Light Orchestra records on import vinyl; those are the ones that often sound the best. Many of the domestic pressings sound as though they were mastered from dub tapes.

But On The Third Day is proof that this is not always the case, just as Siren proves that the best Roxy Music albums are not always British.

This record sounds best this way:

For those who might be interested in finding their own Hot Stamper pressings, we here provide

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Don McLean / American Pie – What to Listen For

Hot Stamper Pressings of Folk Rock Albums Available Now

More Records with Specific Advice on What to Listen For

Beware of copies that are thin, dry or edgy; they take too much of the fun out of the music.

Full vocals and a big, solid piano are key to balancing the singers and musicians correctly.

Tubey Magical Acoustic Guitars can be heard on all the better copies.

Of course they can. This is 1971 after all: they still remembered how to get that sound on tape. On the better copies, Vincent can have rich, sweet, harmonically correct guitars to rival the best recordings from that era.

A little smear, thickness or opacity is not the end of the world — lots of very enjoyable records from 1971 have such issues and they still sound right. Tapestry, Mud Slide Slim, and Tupelo Honey come immediately to mind. It would not be hard to name dozens of others.

You want to keep what is good about a Tubey Magical analog recording from The Golden Age of Popular Music while avoiding the pitfalls so common to them:

  • poor resolution,
  • compression,
  • thickness,
  • opacity,
  • blubber,
  • compromised frequency extremes,
  • a lack of space and
  • a lack of presence.

How’s that for a laundry list of all the problems we hear on old rock records, old classical records, and old jazz records? 

What record doesn’t have at least some of these faults? Not many in our experience. A copy with few or none of these problems would do very well in our Hot Stamper shootouts indeed.

How come we never see Hot Stamper pressings of this album on the site?

Some records are just too noisy to find in the kind of numbers we need for our shootouts, no matter how good they sound. We do the best we can, but the reality is that we have had very little luck with finding early pressings of American Pie for years now. Things do not seem to be getting better in the market either.

Which simply means that if you do ever see this title show up on our site, best to jump on it. It could be ten years before we find the next shootout winners.

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Electric Light Orchestra – On the Third Day

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More Art Rock

  • With seriously good Double Plus (A++) sound from start to finish, this copy is guaranteed to blow the doors off any other On The Third Day you’ve heard
  • This domestic LP is proof that the master tape used to cut the album in 1973 was right here in the good old U.S. of A.
  • Marks in the vinyl are sometimes the nature of the beast with these vintage LPs – there simply is no way around them if the superior sound of vintage analog is important to you
  • “Electric Light Orchestra’s third album showed a marked advancement, with a fuller, more cohesive sound from the band as a whole and major improvements in Jeff Lynne’s singing and songwriting.”
  • “The ELO’s blending of rock drums, pop violins, a semiclassical feel in the sweep of these same violins, the midrange colors of the cello, and a vocal blend that reminds one of the Beatles in their sophisticated studio days, makes up all the key elements in their music.”

Once you’ve played a good domestic pressing, it’s obvious that the Brit vinyl is made from sub-generation copy tapes. The imports make it sound like someone threw a blanket over your speakers.

We know this because we had a bunch of them cleaned up for our first big shootout in 2010 and they all sucked. We always buy Electric Light Orchestra records on import vinyl; those are the ones that sound the best, the domestic pressings time and again sounding as though they were mastered from dub tapes.

But On The Third Day is proof that this is not always the case, just as Siren proves that the best Roxy Music albums are not always British. Live and learn I guess. (more…)

War – Bass, Choruses and Energy Are Key to the Best Pressings

More of the Music of War

More Jazz / Rock Fusion Records with Hot Stampers

[This review was originally published about 2012 or so. Note that we rarely have any War records in stock. If you see one, grab it, the recordings on the best pressings are positively amazing on big speakers at loud levels.]

We just finished our first big shootout for this fun album — the All Music Guide calls it “a magical ride with plenty of surprises to keep the listener on his or her toes” and we couldn’t agree more.

This copy gives you punchy bass, airy flutes, hard-hitting percussion and loads of Tubey Magic. Many copies we played had too much hardness, edge, and midrange honk, but this one is smooth, sweet and rich.

Engineered by the brilliant Chris Huston, this recording displays all his trademark gifts.

His mixes feature:

lots of bass;

huge, room-filling choruses that get loud without straining or congestion; and

rhythmic energy that few pop recordings could lay claim to in 1972.

The links above will take you to other albums that are good for testing all of these qualities.

As for the choruses, allow me to paraphrase our listing from Commoner’s Crown.

This is one of the rare pop/rock albums that actually has actual, measurable, serious dynamic contrasts in its levels as it moves from the verses to the choruses of many songs. The first track on side two, Four Cornered Room, is a perfect example. Not only are the choruses noticeably louder than the verses, but later on in the song the choruses get REALLY LOUD, louder than the choruses of 99 out of 100 rock/pop records we audition. It sometimes takes a record like this to open your ears to how compressed practically everything else you own is.

The Top Is Important Too

Richness and weight are key to the sound, but oddly enough an extended top end was almost as crucial to the success of the best copies. When the top end extends, the sound is open and relaxed. When the various songs build to their climaxes, the copies with lots of clean top end had a sense of “ease” that simply was not to be found on the smoother (read: duller) brethren.

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Electric Light Orchestra – Face The Music

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More Art Rock Records

  • This copy has real depth to the soundfield, full-bodied, present vocals, plenty of bottom end weight, and lovely analog warmth
  • You probably know most of these songs, even if you don’t recognize the titles (Waterfall, One Summer Dream)
  • “The soulful ‘Evil Woman’ was one of the most respectable chart hits of its era, and one of the best songs that Lynne ever wrote (reportedly in 30 minutes), while ‘Strange Magic’ showed off his writing in a more ethereal vein.”
  • If you’re a fan of the band, and what audiophile wouldn’t be?, this classic from 1975 belongs in your collection
  • The complete list of titles from 1975 that we’ve reviewed to date can be found here.

Nobody seems to have noticed — at least I can find no evidence for anyone noticing, using a google search — that the song Fire on High, which opens side one of this album, is directly lifted from the opening song on Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, Funeral for a Friend.

He owes a lot of his sound to The Bee Gees as well as The Beatles, another thing about his music that nobody seems to notice.

But that takes nothing away from the fact that he is a consummate craftsman of catchy pop songs, the kind that get stuck in your head and make your day brighter than it would otherwise have been.

There are many fine examples of these kinds of songs on this very album. The first three (out of four) tracks on side one are all very strong: Fire On High, Waterfall and Evil Woman. On side two all the songs after Poker are very strong: Strange Magic, Down Home Town, and One Summer Dream.

That makes this a fairly consistent ELO record. Not quite the equal of A New World Record but not that far behind it either.

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Gerry Rafferty – Listen for the Huge Chorus of The Ark

More of the Music of Gerry Rafferty

Hot Stamper Albums with Huge Choruses

Albums with Choruses that Are Good for Testing

Listen to the chorus on the first track, The Ark. On the best copies, it really gets loud without becoming harsh or shrill. So many popular albums have choruses (and guitar solos) that are no louder, and sometimes not even as loud, as the verses, which rob the songs of their drama.

This recording has the potential to give you a dramatic, powerful, loud chorus and it’s a thrill when you find a pressing that delivers on that promise.

One way we know to listen for these volume changes is that we actually play our records good and loud. When a dynamic recording such as this comes along, we have to watch our levels, otherwise, the chorus will overwhelm the system and room.

When playing this copy, be sure to set the level for the chorus of the first track. Everything should play just fine once that setting is correct, as the artist intended.

The double-tracked vocals on Whatever’s Written in Your Heart are a good test for transparency, resolution and Tubey Magic. There should clearly be two voices heard. The richness and the clarity of the best pressings make it possible to have it all.

This is a Rock Demo Disc of the highest order, but only when it’s playing on Big Speakers at Loud Levels. That’s what it takes to get City to City to sound the way we hear it in our shootouts.

Starting in the mid-70s, our reference system had to evolve in order to play the scores of challenging recordings that came out in that decade and the two preceding it. Looking back now, it’s clear that City to City, as well as other large scale works, in any genre, informed not only my taste in music but the actual stereo I play that music on.

I’ve had large scale dynamic speakers for close to five decades, precisely in order to play demanding recordings such as City to City and others like it, music I fell in love with all those years ago, and still enjoy the hell out of to this very day.

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War / Why Can’t We Be Friends? – A True Demo Disc

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This Well Recorded Album Should Be More Popular with Audiophiles

  • An incredible copy of the band’s 1975 release, with Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) sound or close to it throughout
  • One of our favorite albums here at Better Records and clearly the band’s Masterpiece – the bass and dynamics on the better pressings make this a Demo Disc on the right system
  • 4 stars [but we give it 5]: “Cut from the same cloth as the band’s 1973 Deliver the Word LP, War’s 1975 Why Can’t We Be Friends? is a masterpiece in its scope and breadth. [It] remains one of War’s truly outstanding efforts, and has become an integral part of the funk genre’s landscape. It also remains the nightcap of their finest hour.”

Engineered by the brilliant Chris Huston, this recording displays all his trademark gifts. His mixes feature lots of bass; huge, room-filling choruses that get loud without straining or becoming congested; and rhythmic energy that few pop recordings could lay claim to in 1975.

Low Rider sounds AWESOME on this one. This is the kind of record you can take to any stereo store or audiophile friend’s house and bring their stereos to their knees. Audiophile systems are rarely designed to play this kind of music at the levels it demands, but that doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be. Records like this are the challenge we audiophiles need to make our stereos even better. When the music is this good it’s worth the effort

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War – Deliver The Word

  • Insanely good Triple Plus (A+++) sound on both sides of this Shootout Winning copy – fairly quiet vinyl too
  • Thanks to the brilliant engineering of Chris Huston, the sound is War at its best: big, rich, smooth and clear, with the kind of low end whomp that few rock records from the era can claim
  • 4 Stars: “A smooth blend of the band’s more progressive jazz-rock fusion, the LP shot to the top of the R&B charts, their second of four number one records in a row. It was a perfect tonic to the mediocre MOR music rampaging its way through the early part of the decade…A magical ride with plenty of surprises to keep the listener on his or her toes, this set is a perfect example of the band at their genre-fusing best.”

Engineered by the brilliant Chris Huston, this recording displays all his trademark gifts. His mixes feature lots of bass; huge, room-filling choruses that get loud without straining or becoming congested; and rhythmic energy that few pop recordings could lay claim to in 1972.

As for the choruses, allow me to paraphrase our listing from Commoner’s Crown.

This is one of the rare pop/rock albums that actually has actual, measurable, serious dynamic contrasts in its levels as it moves from the verses to the choruses of many songs. The first track on side two, Four Cornered Room, is a perfect example. Not only are the choruses noticeably louder than the verses, but later on in the song the choruses get REALLY LOUD, louder than the choruses of 99 out of 100 rock/pop records we audition. It sometimes takes a record like this to open your ears to how compressed practically everything else you own is.

What to Listen For (WTLF)

Richness and weight are key to the sound, but oddly enough an extended top end was almost as crucial to the success of the best copies. When the top end extends, the sound is open and relaxed. When the various songs build to their climaxes, the copies with lots of clean top end had a sense of “ease” that simply was not to be found on the smoother (read: duller) brethren. (more…)